Marketplace, Mesh & a question - your opinions please

[BlackMagi Darkwatch]

Scenario

Worked with a creator to build a MESH that looks great and have adapted it into a build and went to list it for sale...  to be clear - I AM NOT THE CREATOR OF THE MESH but have come to an agreement with the creator to list the item.  I can't list the item on the marketplace as partial MESH without completing the IP quiz (done) and having PIOF (not going to do this out of principle).

Can I sell the object in world without getting into trouble as it's actuallly one of my buildings?  Not going to until I have clarification (wouldn't be right for the purchasers)

Is this a bug that people (without PIOF) can have full-perms MESH?  

Please offer your feedback and if there is a JIRA on this, the link would be appreciated.

Black

[Medhue Simoni]

Just like full perm sculpty's there will be numerous mesh builder packs. Do you really think every1 is going to need to be PIOF? No, you don't. It is the creator of the mesh that will be in trouble if it gets flagged as an infraction.

Now, on to the issue of no PIOF, on principle. What principle would this be? I mean you are gonna sell something, and it's not like every1 can see your info. Personally tho, it really won't bother me at all if all users had to be PIOF, if they want to sell a mesh. This would be impossible to enforce tho.

[Paula001 Goldschein]

Totally edited lol:

I vote *pro* PIOF for merchants in general, mesh or no mesh!

 

 

[Madeliefste Oh]

I was not aware that you need the have PIOF to be able to list something as partial mesh. But you can still list it and use your product description to tell your buyers that it is partial mesh, or more exact which parts are mesh and which not.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Well that is stupid if that is true that that you cannot sell a partial mesh item on MP if you havent done the MESH TEST and have PIOF. 

This is the perfect example.... the creator of the item being listed was not the MESH CREATOR.... he / she is only the assembler of a mix of imput material.  Why has LL decided that only if Mesh is involved must a selling merchant have to abide by all requirements for creating a mesh.  They are not creating the mesh... only using it as an input.

If this is the case, why is LL not demanding that merchants that use my sculpty maps for their builds not being asked to do this test or have PIOF?

This is silly and a half baked idea.

As for a user having or not having PIOF... that is the merchants choice and no one should question why.  I personally didnt want to have PIOF and only did it eventually in order for me to withdraw my profits from SL.

The decision is personal and I understand the reasons why he wouldnt - I surely didnt want to.

[Jennifer Boyle]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

The decision is personal and I understand the reasons why he wouldnt - I surely didnt want to.

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I ask this, not confrontationally, but just seeking understanding;  why?  I could understand that having to have PIOF would be a problem if you couldn't do it, but if you could, why would yoi mind?  I especially wonder, since you can register a throwaway CC number (or prepaid debit card number) and have PIOF, and if you use it just once, you can have PIU, after which you can cancel it and have nothing on file without affecting your PIU status.

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

The decision is personal and I understand the reasons why he wouldnt - I surely didnt want to.

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I ask this, not confrontationally, but just seeking understanding;  why?  I could understand that having to have PIOF would be a problem if you couldn't do it, but if you could, why would yoi mind?  I especially wonder, since you can register a throwaway CC number (or prepaid debit card number) and have PIOF, and if you use it just once, you can have PIU, after which you can cancel it and have nothing on file without affecting your PIU status.

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As was mentioned.... its a matter of policy  / principle when operating online with online gaming / social networks to have a strong level of adherence to maintaining high anonymity.  I really didnt want even LL to know my RL personal identification - in any way. 

LL has proven countless times since I started how weak and immature both their development and business policies are.  To give a company like this my RL credentials (even yoru "throw away" CC means they now know your RL name and likely credit check you through that card to find out more about you) is something I was and still am uncomfortable about when I generally do not prefer giving out my RL ID that ties it to my SL/online personna.  I dont want my anyone generally to relate my SL and RL.

So... myself and many others like me have a policy that we generally do not like breaking of not release RL identity from our online alias.

thats why.

 

 

[Ciaran Laval]

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BlackMagi Darkwatch wrote:

Scenario

Worked with a creator to build a MESH that looks great and have adapted it into a build and went to list it for sale...  to be clear - I AM NOT THE CREATOR OF THE MESH but have come to an agreement with the creator to list the item.  I can't list the item on the marketplace as partial MESH without completing the IP quiz (done) and having PIOF (not going to do this out of principle).

Can I sell the object in world without getting into trouble as it's actuallly one of my buildings?  Not going to until I have clarification (wouldn't be right for the purchasers)

Is this a bug that people (without PIOF) can have full-perms MESH?  

Please offer your feedback and if there is a JIRA on this, the link would be appreciated.

Black

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You can't list Mesh items without having PIOF? I didn't realise this, What happens when someone buys a full perm mesh item for building purposes then? They can't list it on the marketplace? This is very silly.

[Madeliefste Oh]

You can list them, but it is not possible to mark them as '100% mesh' or 'partial mesh'.

[Alicia Sautereau]

Cause it would stop the alt abuse on throw away accounts, every one accountable, even the alts

[BlackMagi Darkwatch]

Firstly, thank you all for taking the time to view/reply to this message I really do appreciate your time and ideas. I do apologise for not replying sooner to this post as I thought I would be automatically subscribed to the feed as I created it!  I am not going into my reasoning behind not having PIOF as it’s really irrelevant but suffice it to say, “this is not a throw away account."

The point I am trying to make is I can buy full perms mesh but can't list it for sale on the marketplace with the relevant 'Partial /100% Mesh', now for those that don’t read product descriptions – short term they end up with a build they cannot use/see and they’re forced to update their viewer (if their computer allows it) or they have wasted however many L$’s the item(s) were.

Now, using Firestorm or LL viewer if I try to upload a model it tells me I cannot because obviously I don't have PIOF and that's 100% right (I am not going to be drawn into a conversation about other viewers that try and circumnavigate Lindens rules as the IP test says that meshes illegally uploaded once identified and notified will be removed). Why then does the marketplace deem it necessary to stop me from listing my derivative  creation with the correct mesh information when the viewer has already stopped me from uploading 'illegal' meshes?

Black

[Ciaran Laval]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

You can list them, but it is not possible to mark them as '100% mesh' or 'partial mesh'.

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Good point Ms Oh, which makes it all the more silly.

[BlackMagi Darkwatch]

Going to try now and see what happens - thank you all

[Gavin Hird]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

As was mentioned.... its a matter of policy  / principle when operating online with online gaming / social networks to have a strong level of adherence to maintaining high anonymity.  I really didnt want even LL to know my RL personal identification - in any way. 

 

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Why would you expect LL to take you serious as a merchant and remain anonymous?

A very good and sound business principle is that the parties are known to each other. IMO you should not be able to list on the marketplace without LL having your real identity on record. 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

As was mentioned.... its a matter of policy  / principle when operating online with online gaming / social networks to have a strong level of adherence to maintaining high anonymity.  I really didnt want even LL to know my RL personal identification - in any way. 

 

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Why would you expect LL to take you serious as a merchant and remain anonymous?

A very good and sound business principle is that the parties are known to each other. IMO you should not be able to list on the marketplace without LL having your real identity on record. 

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ROFL... first of all.... LL doesnt have to take me serious.  I dont make any money from them so I dont care one plug nickel if they dont take me serious.  As long as they do their job and treat your customers LIKE ME as any vendor should treat a customer.

The people that I want to take me serious already do.... MY CUSTOMERS... fellow SL residents.  And its great that a lot of merchants seem to as well.  I was just asked to be in ( and will be in a few weeks ) a book being written about how to start and operate a successful business in sl.

and isnt it so funny Gavin.... the 1000+ customer I have that have paid me $1000's of US cash for my few products I offer the market.... none of them seemed to be too concerned that they didnt know my real identity.  rofl

Soooooo Gavin.... I am guessing your theory is pretty much out the window since I made a ton of cash being in business in SL ... using a VENDOR like LL as a platform to make my cash.  LL doesnt or shouldnt care who the real person behind the merchant is that is generating their revenue for them and generating all their content on their grid.... as long as they have a way to pay me my cash when I earn too much linden in my account.

[Medhue Simoni]

I wouldn't say the theory is out the window. I'd say that knowing that the merchant has PIOF when you buy from them, adds comfort to the process. Anonymity adds discomfort to the exchange. Of course, many people don't have any problem with it. That doesn't mean 1 "theory" is right or wrong, as right and wrong are not what we are talking about here.

Personally, I want my customers to feel as comfortable as possible, when they purchase from me. This is also why I like to talk to my customers as much as I can, and I'm not afraid to tell people about my personal life. PIOF and avatar age, are simply a baseline, to show that you take what you do seriously. When I go shopping in SL, I don't mind paying a few lindens more, if I know the merchant has PIOF or they are of a decent avatar age. If you want to say that customers prove how right you are, I'll just say that my last update to a product, went to thousands of customers. That was just 1 product, and it is 1 of my most expensive.

Of course, other merchants can do as they please. I simply asked what the "principle" of not having PIOF was. I was just curious to the reasoning, and it is still lost on me. If this is simply a technical problem, then I understand. Not doing something because of your principles doesn't usually refer to a technical problem.

[Ann Otoole]

Within a year it won't matter if it has mesh since it will be assumed. LL should have had the foresight to understand there needs to be no build type flags. The seller can post prim, sculpt, or mesh in features.

[Gavin Hird]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

ROFL... first of all.... LL doesnt have to take me serious.  I

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Judging from your other and many postings concerning the marketplace, I think you want them to take you very serious, but I guess they already took  your point. ;-)

 

To the matter, your can ROFL all you want but the fact is that having registered developers and merchants on the marketplace would significantly cut down on copybotted or otherwise copyright infringing goods that currrently floods the market as freebies or very cheap items. It would also flush out a lot of old items still offered by people who have left SecondLife.  

Having the same type of registration and quiz for everyone trading on the marketplace would seriously sober up the place. It would also treat all merchants there the same.

[Porky Gorky]

I completely agree with Gavin here. In fact I would take it one step further and change it so that only premium account holders could list and sell content on the marketplace and in-world.

The anonymity currently afforded to merchants in SL has also helped drive up the amount of copyright infringement we see in SL today. There needs to be more regulation and better accountability in this multi-million dollar market.

 

[Ann Otoole]

There are plenty of premium land holding profesional rippers operating without limits in SL. They simply learned to rip korean or other non US game content as it is unlikely to be recognized. Sorry. Will not work. You cannot have UGC without risk of infringements. What are you going to do? IP mask ban the 5 or 6 countries that sponsor cyber fraud and cyber terror? Fine with me.

[Gavin Hird]

Well, you possibly could, but having to register as a developer / merchant would help eliminate the large amounts of goods being offered on the marketplace that have been ripped off other SecondLife developers. 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

I wouldn't say the theory is out the window....

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Actually Medhue, lets get back to what theory Gavin suggestion...

Gavin said to me: "Why would you expect LL to take you serious as a merchant and remain anonymous?"

He did not ask why would my customers expect to take me seriou as a Merchant.  And again, my response was that "I DO NOT CARE IF LL DOES OR DOES NOT TAKE ME SERIOUSLY". 

It has already been established for a very long time by most of the merchant community that LL Commerce does not take the entire Merchant community serious - regardless if some of the members have PIOF or not.  And honestly, when a vendor / supplier of my (like LL is) treats their customers with such complete disrespect - it is not a major factor if they want to take me serious or not.  They already do not take me nor you nor Gavin seriously - regardlesss if our identity is known or not.

 

I only care if my customers trust me enough that they will want to buy from me.  And in that manner, you and Gavin and Porky can have your theories but they are simply acedemic - the VAST MAJORITY of SL customers (at least most of mine) dont take even 1 second to check if I have a PIOF... nor do they care Medhue if you are a nice guy in RL or have a family in Iceland or you are a sheep herder in Scotland.  You all are kidding yourselves if this is a major factor in your products being sold.

I love to get to know my customers - if they reach out and ask me a question or are in my store and I will engage in an intro "HI - is there any way I can help you".  But, 99% of my customers go onto MP, find my product (either by search or word of mouth) and simply buy my product because my listing convinced them that they needed it and it would work.

As such, since I do not care to have LL's respect (since they dont respect their customers in general), and since having their respect would improve my sales any, and since my customers buy from me even if they do or dont know who I am, then.... me maintaining my RL privacy and anonymity is of greater importance.

Ohhh and for Gavin Porky and you that all are hoping that LL will force Merchants to reveal their RL identity in order to participate in SL activities - your hopes go against the CIO of LL that has a very strong understanding and holds a very high importance in the ability for SL Customers to remain anonymous.  He has made several presentations on the reasons why.

Your RL identity being discovered may not be of high importance to you... but for countless others it has very high importance and so the principle and practice to maintain this anonymity is critical for them.  So dont question or judge others that have a high importance to keeping their RL / SL relation private just because it is of low value to you.

As for Porky's belief that all Merchants must be a Premium account to be a Merchant.... sorry - I dont see any value in this and in fact all it does is not only reduce the Merchant population of possible "evil doers" it will also reduce the Merchant community size of legit merchants that do not want to be premium account holders.  There is very little value in being a premium account holder - this would simply be a tax grab for LL.

Copybotters and all other evils will simply sell more of their stuff inworld where an annual Merchant Fee is not required.

You all need to stop with the "life would be so much better if there were more Merchant fees and controls and and and" theories.  Put yourself in the shoes of most of your customers.  They dont care about your theories of what makes them buy products.....  PIOF and Premium accounts etc. doesnt do any of this.

 

[Gavin Hird]

This is not a question about your customers and the realtion to them.

This is a question about you - as a merchant and developer - and your relation to Linden Lab and your fellow merchants. 

By having to disclose your real identity to Linden Lab to be able to trade on the marketplace, it makes you much more responsible in terms of what goods you offer and how it was obtained. It makes it possible to legally go after you if you infringe on other peoples IP. 

Nobody has said that your RL indentity must be revealed to the rest of the SecondLife community unless you decide to do so. I don't care if I only know you as Toysoildier, but the minute I found you infringed on my IP, I would be very interested to know who you are. Having that disclosed to Linden Lab gives me a certain assurance. 

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

This is not a question about your customers and the realtion to them.

This is a question about you - as a merchant and developer - and your relation to Linden Lab and your fellow merchants. 

By having to disclose your real identity to Linden Lab to be able to trade on the marketplace, it makes you much more responsible in terms of what goods you offer and how it was obtained. It makes it possible to legally go after you if you infringe on other peoples IP. 

Nobody has said that your RL indentity must be revealed to the rest of the SecondLife community unless you decide to do so. I don't care if I only know you as Toysoildier, but the minute I found you infringed on my IP, I would be very interested to know who you are. Having that disclosed to Linden Lab gives me a certain assurance. 

 

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That was Medhue's belief on how PIOF was somehow going to improve sales as they will know me better and feel more comfortable buying from a merchant that exposes himself.

But go back to your initial statement.  Honestly, LL does not personally care if Evil Doing Merchant #1 is stealing IP from Good Open Honest Reveal All RL info to LL Merchant #2.  This is not an issue between this evil merchant and LL - its an issue between Merchants. 

So maybe you are lulled into a false sense of comfort that if MP was made up of only PIOF / Premium Account holders, but if were an evil doing Merchant and your content is something I would love to steal and make $ on, I would just buy a copy or steal a copy as one of your customers and then sell it inworld.  I would take it to Inworldz and other open sims where your small sphere of control does not exist and make cash on your IP there.

So your hopes that adding more controls on MP will scare away all the evil doers and solve your IP woes is wishful thinking.  What it will do is move a lot of the problem elsewhere and at the same time discourage a lot of creative legit content from new or existing merchants that do not wish to do business within these MP controls.

But really.... you and porky and medhue and any others that would like mandatory controls that would only allow "professional" commercial merchants to use MP would actually hope that these controls do scare away evil and legit merchants.... lesss competition for you to deal with I guess.

Thankfully - LL Commerce does not listen to their customers - so this means they will never listen to the ideas in this thread about mandatory merchant controls like Premium Account holders only.

(PS to make you feel better - I was forced to PIOF but only because I wanted to convert all my profits to RL $)

[Gavin Hird]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

(PS to make you feel better - I was forced to PIOF but only because I wanted to convert all my profits to RL $)

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Good!

As I have stated elsewhere, a developer program is overdue.

You should only be able to trade on the market place if member of the developer program. The program should have a yearly fee to be a member. You would have to disclose your real identity to the program manager (LL.)  As a member you should be able to trade all your content on equal standing regardless of prim, sculpt, mesh, script ...  

Membership fees should be used to develop the marketplace, such as having multiple brands for one developer, seasonal products, varieties, much better reporting, campaing management, bundling management, etc, etc. 

I don't think a direct connection between premium and developer is a good idea as I can see many cases of people wanting to be member of one or the other.